Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.

Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

Welcome to the mountainhomes of the dwarves! Starting out with a hardy band of seven pioneers, you will be beset on all sides by the threat of starvation, exposure, rampant idiocy, inexperience, tantrums, monkey attacks, hostile goblins, kleptomaniacal kobolds, accidental drownings, those goddamn hippy elves, being set on fire, upper class nobles that will make lives hell for your peasantry, and the mortal enemies of the dwarves: elephantscarp goblin lashers.

v 0.31.XX FAQ

Since the last thread started the game has gone from 0.31.03 to 0.31.18. A lot has changed during that time, mostly for the better.

Q: So what's Dwarf Fortress?
It's a rather bizarre littlehuge roguelike/ fantasy world generator / colony management sim hybrid. With lots of dead dwarves guaranteed.
You start out with a tiny band of 7 dwarves, a wagon, mules and a pair of cats that multiply without any restraint and flood your fortress with kittens.
With a little luck (and if those goddamn monkeys don't steal all your food off the wagon again), your fortress will make it past the first winter. Or more likely it will collapse and you'll start up a new fortress, avoiding the mistakes of the first.

...before it all ends in a tide of blood and dwarf parts!
And then you start AGAIN!

Though it may seem ungainly at first, the game’s interface — rendered in what are known as extended ASCII characters — has a sparse elegance. As seasons change, trees, represented by various symbols, shift from green to yellow. Goblins’ eyes appear as red quotation marks; if you shoot out an eye with an arrow, the symbol becomes an apostrophe. On a message board, one fan likened the ASCII experience in Dwarf Fortress to the immersive pleasures of reading a book: “You can let your imagination fill in the gaps.”

Q: This game is overwhelming! Where do I start?
A: An old-fashioned text tutorial is available here: Your First Fortress (our own BahamutZERO wrote that! Originally. It's been thoroughly edited and made more awesome since then.)

Q: AAAAA LETTERS EVERYWHERE OH GOD HOW DO I DO STUFF?!
A: A few keys will come up a lot. Pressing these keys will bring up a yellow X cursor which you control using the arrow keys. PROTIP: use the keypad to move the cursor around- it's more comfortable.

Q - Assigns orders at workshops and structures, or used to create rooms from a placed structure, like tables, beds, archery targets, etc, or to destroy them.R - Battle Reports! The fun (and biting) really happens here.T - Mainly useful for examining the contents of a building or structure, to see how cluttered a workshop is or what it's built out of.V - Examines an individual dwarf, where you can look at their stats, gear, thoughts and alter their job list.K - If you'd like to see if that U is an attacking Unicorn or a friendly hUman trader, this is the key you want. It basically lets you examine the contents of a tile. Pressing enter examines objects in greater detail, if any is available.D - Designates an area for tasks. Hit enter to start dragging out a rectangle, enter to stop. Or hold down the mouse button and draw it in. Everything in this area will now be designated for whatever task you had selected, from Digging out rock, cutting down trees, or picking plants, or whatever else it might have been. Use this to dig out your dwarf-hole.Z - Brings up your fortress report and tells you how depressingly low you are on food.U - displays a list of all units on the map, along with current job. Useful for finding idlers and wild animals< and > - Change the levevel displayed by one (up and down, respectively). Since you'll be using these a lot, it might be wise to remap the keys (I use / and * on the keypad). To do this, press ESC and use the "Key Bindings" option ("move/view cursor up (Z)" and "down (Z)" )

Q: The UI requires so many keystrokes, can't I use a mouse??
The latest version supports the mouse, however it's still somewhat hard to use effectively since it's limited to "drawing" selections.

Q: Do graphic packages work? UPDATED 3/8
A: Some do. The most popular, May Green's, currently uses 0.31.21 (March 8, 2011). Note that Mayday's version has a completely unique configuration from the plain vanilla version of DF, most notably some changes to the key bindings. See his website for more info.

I'm loving the shit out of it right now. Not only are the sounds awesome, they're incredibly useful for providing feedback on things you might otherwise miss. Really can't recommend it enough. Go download it. Go.

Spoiler:

Are you downloading it yet?

Q: What's different since 0.28.xx?
A: A lot. That's the full list - beware spoilers. You may want to try playing the game before reading the list. Here's a fun update from December 13: "Your dwarves can shear sheep and other woolly beasts now. There are sixteen new domestic animals. Eggs, vegetable oil and clay upcoming." Yay!

Q: What happens if I do this?
Just try it first! It's no fun if we tell you that you would have doomed all your dwarves to a horrible agonizing death beforehand. No fun at all!
Besides, it just means you get to do it better next time.

Q: I have a talented biter in my military and he is currently leading a biting demonstration. What the hell does that entail?
A: The military is a bitch to set up in the latest version, but Furlion has come to the rescue and prepared a military tutorial for us peasants.

Q: Are there stories to be told?
A: This is what is so great about Dwarf Fortress. Every fort or adventure has a tale to tell. No matter how bad you are, there is always SOMETHING interesting that happens. Here's a short list of notable forts that have been immortalized in art:

InfestedGnome: Is your butcher shop cluttered? It's possible the butchers can't get anything done because of the piles of hoofs and nervous tissue that have no purpose in the game. Try dumping some of it.

Q: This game is overwhelming! Where do I start?
A: An old-fashioned text tutorial is available here: Your First Fortress (our own BahamutZERO wrote that! Originally. It's been thoroughly edited and made more awesome since then.)

Someone in the last thread talked about how they where set on food FOREVER because of Hunters and Elephants. Sadly, what they failed to mention is the problem I am currently having, in that I am DROWNING in Elephant FAT.

If I was at home I would get a screen shot, but at last count I had some 151 pieces of Elephant Tallow, and over 1800(!!) Elephant Fat. I have 4 kitchens going and I just can't get caught up! I had to tell all my Hunters to stop hunting! And let me tell you, telling a Legendary Hunter/Archer/Marksdwarf he isn't allowed to hunt anymore is a bit nerve racking!

I'm sad that I can't seem to turn off Auto-Kitchening without disabling Auto-Tanning and Auto-Butchery at the same time. I just can't get my meals made ^_^;

Q: This game is overwhelming! Where do I start?
A: An old-fashioned text tutorial is available here: Your First Fortress (our own BahamutZERO wrote that! Originally. It's been thoroughly edited and made more awesome since then.)

I was getting to grips with learning everything all over again. Had a good little industry set up, was just starting to get migration waves. Farming didn't seem to be working properly so I was out searching for caves. Found one.

I was getting to grips with learning everything all over again. Had a good little industry set up, was just starting to get migration waves. Farming didn't seem to be working properly so I was out searching for caves. Found one.

Everybody in my fortress got eaten by a single Cave Crocodile.

ffffffffffff

Been there, done that. Got the blood stained t-shirt that still had a dorf arm in it.

I was getting to grips with learning everything all over again. Had a good little industry set up, was just starting to get migration waves. Farming didn't seem to be working properly so I was out searching for caves. Found one.

Everybody in my fortress got eaten by a single Cave Crocodile.

ffffffffffff

Were you wetting the ground for farming? That's a requirement again in the current version.

I was getting to grips with learning everything all over again. Had a good little industry set up, was just starting to get migration waves. Farming didn't seem to be working properly so I was out searching for caves. Found one.

Everybody in my fortress got eaten by a single Cave Crocodile.

ffffffffffff

Were you wetting the ground for farming? That's a requirement again in the current version.

It's all mudded up and everything. Light dusting of mud. Admittedly I only used a single square of 7/7 water to wet (It was the closest I had!) but only one of the things was being planted on consistantly.

I think it's time for me to get back into DF after Christmas, to once again pursue my dream of converting a mountain into a glittering spire of waterfalls and glass (complete with an automated sanitation system to flush out goblins, blood and vomit). My previous attempts have been pretty good until such incidents as the entire mountaintop suddenly collapsing, a critical entrance to the fortress being left open by accident, or the elaborate and gigantic goblin-flushing mechanism disastrously misfiring due to the actions of a tantruming dwarf.

I haven't played since June though. Last I played, archery didn't really work at all, melee squads were extremely tricky to get to train anything, and doctors rarely did anything (aside from pretending to suture a wound for months). Also some forgotten beasts were impossible to kill. I take it there have been improvements in these areas? Have there been any major changes/bugs since then?

Looks like the current version no longer has the huge FPS issues that caused me to stop playing DF in the first place, or at least the situation has vastly improved. No longer do I have to base each and every design decision on how much it'll affect my FPS.

I've been playing since probably late 2006 and I still can't figure it out, so I'd say no. I'm sure it's not that hard, but I just start reading the wiki and suddenly my eyes lose focus and I start drooling on myself.

I haven't played DF in over a year and a half, since my computer just couldn't handle it without slowing to a crawl after a point. I might have to get back at it eventually, ig such issues have been fixed.

I think I'll wait a whole year before getting back to Dwarf Fortress. Once you've mastered the first winter, trap setting and training up your army the game is unlosable. I'm sick of making rules and conducts up just to play the game.

Fortress 3 since getting back into DF is going swimmingly relative to the first two, especially by my only metric (has this fortress been entirely consumed by alligators in the first 45 seconds of gameplay [Y/N])